Well, your faithful correspondent has now been in Romania for a week, so I thought
it was time for a Romanian update. If you’re more interested in the Idema story,
stay tuned because I just got some more information on that and will update you
very shortly.
It’s nearly October, and the weather is changing. After living in the South (of
the US) for a long time, it’s kinda nice for me to feel the wind blow, see the
leaves start to drop, and the weather turn a little nippy. Everybody here uses
Celsius of course, which is confusing for me as I’m quite accustomed to Fahrenheit,
but as nearly as I can tell it’s about 50’s at night time and gets up to the low
80’s at times during the day. Today looks to be a bit chillier, but you can always
see the weather where I am (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) by looking on the right-hand
column. Even though I’m quite busy, I usually manage to squeeze in a few moments
on a park bench in the afternoon to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.
I’ve been extremely busy running around, trying to find out where all the stores
and other places are near my house, especially since I don’t have a car and don’t
plan to buy one. If you’ve never been to Europe, you might be surprised to see
the sheer number of people around here who use the sidewalks and are on the street
at nearly every hour of the day. Public transportation, such as buses as well
as the “tramvai” (a kind of tram train), are not just for poor people or “desperate”
people like in most cities in the U.S., but are used by everyone. You can even
see men with ties and women with business dress on inside the buses and tramvais,
which are always crowded. When I first visited Romania years ago, nearly every
car on the street was a “Dacia”, a local brand that is based on Renault models.
Now the streets seem to be about half Dacias and half other cars, many of them
seen throughout Europe such as Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, Fiat (Italian), SEAT
(Spain) and Skoda (Czech Republic). There are even a few Fords running around,
as Ford maintains an extensive European presence, although most of the models
would be unfamiliar to an American (with the exception of the Ford Focus, which
was first sold in Europe). Romania still maintains a few large truck production
facilities, so a lot of the tractor trailers are “ROMAN” models (that’s the name!).
What’s also interesting is that many of the country folk around here still drive
around in horse drawn carts, which mix uneasily with normal car traffic on the
streets. I’ll definitely go down to street level sometime soon so I can snap a
few pictures of them. There’s nothing that so succinctly encapsulates Romanian
society than seeing a brand new BMW driving alongside a country person driving
a horse and wagon on the same street.
I know some of my readers are Romanian, so excuse me for a second while I introduce
everyone else to what you already know, but I think it might be interesting to
some. I used to live in Spain, which suffered for years under a totalitarian dictator
(Franco) who passed away in his sleep in the 1970’s. When Franco died, Spain was
in approximately the same position as most Communist countries were before 1989
- no freedom of the press, barely any capitalist activity, stores empty of even
the most essential goods and people unsure of how to act without the government
dictating every move. Spain today is a modern country, a member of both NATO and
the European Union, and any American visitor would have no clue of how much they
had changed in such a short time.
Romania is really just about the same, only about 10 years behind Spain. The
dictator is dead, never to return, and the people here are just starting to get
used to thinking and fending for themselves. When my friend Princess Buttercup
was a child, she went to a school which dictated what you would learn up to and
including any university. Had the dictator survived, she would have been assigned
a job for life and when she got married, the government would’ve told her where
to live. When she was a child, there were almost no stores, and anything beyond
bread and basic foodstuffs was nearly impossible to obtain. Now Romania is awash
in commercialism, sometimes to the point where I feel like I’m in the middle of
Times Square in New York. There are scrolling billboards, ads on the side of buses
and tramvais, advertising banners hung over the center of the streets, lots and
lots of cars draped in advertising banners (to my mind, it looks like a NASCAR
race gone wild), even most people walk around with slogans and logos on their
clothing. There is a McDonald’s in my town, as well as most other large Romanian
cities, and lots of other brand names Americans would be familiar with such as
Coca-Cola, Pantene (shampoo) and Marlboro cigarettes. I’ve got a Panasonic boombox
in my kitchen and Westinghouse lightbulbs in my bathroom (made in Hungary by the
way).
On the other hand, the government bureaucracy and its legacy of endless red tape
still is a handicap to doing business in an efficient manner. Yesterday, I went
and signed the contract to get high speed internet in my apartment and the paperwork
I had to sign looked like a mortgage on a million dollar home. I think there were
7 or 8 places to sign, and all sorts of documentation was required before we could
even get to that point. Also, we had to go around to a couple of different offices
of the internet company just to get different bosses to stamp the paperwork. Like
all former Communist countries, everyone here owns some kind of stamp and they
love stamping paperwork. It’s nearly a national hobby 
Actually, yesterday I ran an errand for a friend of mine and I went down to a
small store that makes stamps and their business was jumping. I couldn’t help
but smile when I returned and saw my friend (who owns his own small advertising
business) stamp each page of a contract he had written with three separate stamps
Romania is really at the crossroads, with one foot in the modern European present
and one foot in the ancient, feudal past. I live in one of the biggest cities
in the country, yet just a few miles outside of town you can find people that,
for lack of a better word, are “peasants”, living a life that hasn’t changed in
hundreds of years. The peasants live in tiny houses clustered in the center of
a village and head out into the fields at daybreak to work the crops without gasoline,
tractors or modern equipment. They use horses and wooden carts to transport their
goods. In other parts of the country, wandering shepherds on foot with just a
crook and a small bag of possessions still watch over flocks of sheep. In the
region of Romania known as Maramures (Mara-moo-resh), people still wear the same
traditional folk clothing they’ve worn for centuries. I was in a bookstore the
other day and it was a surreal experience to see a modern, well-dressed Romanian
man buying a coffee table book of pictures and essays about Maramures.
There is a TV channel here called “Etno TV”, carried not just in Romania but
also on cable in Chicago, that is a 24-hour broadcast of Romanians dressed in
traditional folk clothes singing traditional songs. A lot of adult Romanians who
live inside these modern cities have a great nostalgia and longing for the “old
ways” and enjoy seeing and hearing these old songs. The house I’m living in, which
I’m renting from Mrs. Green, has a VCR and television in the living room. I hooked
up the VCR yesterday and saw that Mrs. Green had left a tape behind. I pressed
Play and saw it was nothing other than a recording of a big concert of traditional
music in the capital a few years ago.
As a relic from the Communist days, most of the city dwellers live in gigantic
hives of concrete apartment buildings known here as “blocs”. My own apartment
is nestled inside a whole cluster of other buildings, and if you saw the Picture of the Day I shot from my kitchen window the other day, you can see an equal number of
these buildings across the street from me. Most Romanians however, dream of living
in single homes more in the American style, with a little yard and a fence. On
television, they’re always showing new housing communities being built featuring
just such homes. If you live in Romania and have any extra money, it’s quite common
to find a little plot in the country and build a “villa” or country house, complete
with white fence and little front yard. I’ve even seen a few lawnmowers for sale
in the shops here, which is unusual since nearly everyone here lives in a concrete
apartment “bloc” like I do. One of the nicer features of these concrete “blocs”
is that most of them come with extensive balconies, and nearly everyone has a
plethora of green plants growing on them. Mrs. Green left behind a whole nursery
full of plants and green things on her balcony, and I’m honestly quite afraid
some of them are going to die under my not-so-green thumb
I’m going to go ahead and say this because I’ve gotten asked this a lot, but
there are no Russians in this country and almost nobody here speaks the Russian
language. Although Romania was part of the Communist bloc for years, there was
never any pro-Russian sentiment and once the Soviet Union fell apart, everyone
who spoke the language was happy to forget it. Many of the adults aged 40-60 speak
a little German around here, but nearly everyone under the age of 30 is busy learning
English, which is useful for your faithful correspondent From my understanding,
Hungary is about the same in terms of foreign languages, in contrast with countries
like Slovakia where the second language of choice is still Russian and English
is a mysterious language spoken by only a few. German remains probably the third
most common language here, as there are lots of Romanians who live in German speaking
countries (particularly Austria) and Vienna is only about a 10 hour drive from
where I’m sitting right now.
Romania is a country with a diverse history, and did not exist in its modern
form with its current borders until 1920. The largest minority here are ethnic
Hungarians, particularly in Transylvania (where I live). I don’t speak a lick
of Hungarian, but I can recognize it when it is being spoken, and many of the
people in my building have Hungarian names on their mailboxes. It’s possible to
buy Hungarian language newspapers here in Cluj and I see advertisements and signs
in Hungarian all the time. While Romanian is an offshoot of Latin, and many words
would be understandable to an English speaker, Hungarian belongs to a completely
separate language group and even things like numbers sound like Martian to me.
Yesterday I was over at Princess Buttercup’s office when these two gangly youths
knocked on the door and asked me something in Romanian. They had some aluminum
flashing with them and were clearly part of a construction crew, but I couldn’t
understand what they were asking me. I told them I didn’t speak Romanian very
well (in Romanian of course!) and they asked me if I was German. I told them no
and they asked me then if I was Italian. I kept saying “English, English” and
then they finally asked me if I was British. I finally said “American” which they
kicked around for a minute until they finally realized what I was saying. The
lead guy broke out into this huge smile and said “Dollar!” and I just laughed
and laughed. I guess that’s the first thing people think of. A friend of mine
came around the corner and settled the matter, which it turned out they were there
to work on the house next door where another friend of mine lives, fixing the
gutters which had sprung a major leak. The entire crew was ethnic Hungarians and
I chatted with them a few minutes more, hearing them laugh in surprise to realize
a genuine American was standing around talking to them.
Although there are Hungarian language schools, most Hungarians in Romania learn
Romanian language while the opposite is not true. There has been a lot of ethnic
tension in this area for a long time, going back to when the Hungarians were the
ruling class back in the days of the Hapsburg Empire, but in general the two groups
get along. Cluj had a mayor for a long time (Gheorghe Funar) who was bitterly
anti-Hungarian, but with a new administration in town it seems things are calming
down. Now that Hungary is part of the European Union, prices there have skyrocketed
and many Hungarians are coming to Romania to shop and also to visit the Hungarian
areas of Transylvania. For modern Hungarians, some of the Hungarian villages in
Romania are a bridge to their cultural past, and tourism is up quite a lot in
this area. Some friends of mine are working on establishing a company to promote
Hungarian tourism to the villages around here. I saw on the news last night where
one enterprising village has set up a summer camp for Hungarians (from Hungary
proper) so their children can come and live the traditional life for a couple
weeks in the summer. Part of the traditional Hungarian costume is a large straw
hat (which looks to me like a Mexican sombrero) and this particular village created
an absolutely gigantic hat. A tourist can put this gigantic hat on and have their
picture snapped for 25 bucks, and apparently business is quite good.
A group of ethnic Germans were part of a wave of immigrants here in Transylvania
a few hundred years ago, and while most of them have since left for Germany, much
of their influence is still retained. There are German restaurants and still a
few German villages (called “Saxon villages”) and many Transylvanian cities also
have a German name. Cluj, where I live, is known as “Klausenburg” for instance.
Most Transylvanian towns and villages also have Hungarian names, so it’s kind
of strange to come up on a town and see three separate names for the same place
(Cluj by the way is “Kolosvar” in Hungarian). Since most of Romania was originally
a Roman colony, I can tell you that “Napoca” was the original name for this city,
given by Emperor Trajan. So, in reality, my town has four names: Cluj (Romanian),
Kolosvar (Hungarian), Klausenburg (German) and Napoca (Latin). The Communists,
in an effort to promote the Latin roots of the Romanian people, officially changed
the name to “Cluj-Napoca” a few years ago so that’s what it will say on your map
Today’s Picture of the Day is of my first shopping trip by myself to the local grocery store. It’s always
a little daunting to go shopping by myself because the cashier or other people
could start querying me in rapid Romanian and I don’t quite have the language
skills to always understand what’s being said. I’m sure in a few months I’ll be
whistling a different tune, but for now it’s a little intimidating. I went shopping
at my “friendly” PROFI store, who is the happy red change purse you see on the
upper half of the picture. Inside that bag is the goods you see in the bottom
half of the picture, which was a jar of bean soup (delicious!), two bags of my
favorite “Chio” brand chips (paprika flavored, yum!), two croissants with chocolate
filling and a 9 volt battery. The battery ended up being dead as Ceausescu when
I got it home, which sucks since it was expensive. The two croissants, two bags
of chips and jar of soup cost about 3 American dollars, which is obviously quite
inexpensive (for me). Romanians do not earn a lot of money, relative to western
Europe or the United States, and some items such as food are much cheaper than
in the States. Other items, like high speed internet or electronic goods (radios,
televisions, computers) are the same price as back home, which means they are
super expensive for most Romanians.
My two favorite Romanian food items, mineral water and bread, are very affordable by my standards. A two pound loaf of bread costs roughly 60 cents
and is tender and delicious and available on nearly every corner. Romania’s mountains
are home to some of the purest and cleanest water springs in the world, and a
two liter bottle costs roughly 80 cents. “Borsec” brand water has won several
international competitions for drinking water, in terms of quality and taste,
but I prefer “Izvorul Minunilor” which is bottled just a hundred miles from here
in the village of “Stana de Vale”. I should add here that “Izvorul Minunilor”
translates as “Wonder Spring” in English, and has been a favorite source for drinking
water since Roman times. Romanian water comes in two kinds: “sparking” mineral
water and ordinary “flat” water without the bubbles. While most people in the
States associate sparkling mineral water with Perrier, I can tell you that Perrier
tastes very sour and bitter compared to the light, refreshing taste of Romanian
water. For those who prefer the unsparkling, “flat” kind of water, there are also
many brands of locally bottled water that is absolutely delicious as well.
Well folks, that’s it for my report from Romania today. I’m not sure if y’all
are interested in reading my views on my new home, but I love it here and have
visited here several times in the past. Just like anywhere, it always helps to
know the locals and have friends to show you around, and for that I am blessed.
My friends are a little busy right now with their business concerns, but I’ve
learned how to get around here during previous visits and I’m doing pretty good
on my own. The cable people said they should turn on my internet in a week or
so, so until then I’ll be hanging out in smoky Internet cafes while I blog. The
one I’ve been using costs about 50 cents an hour to use, so that’s pretty reasonable.
My hotel in Budapest wanted to charge me 6 bucks an hour, which is why I didn’t
log on from there when I first arrived.
Peace
Peace, Love and Grease
